Nonparticipation
by La Editor
Summary: She is frail and small with radishes dangling from her ears, and she terrifies him.


****

**Water drips.**

Draco doesn't like the sound, but he's never liked the sounds of the dank, of the dark. The stone dungeon frightens him, to be entirely honest, but he is a Malfoy and he sneers to show the darkness what's what as his shoes click against the stairs, echoing through the hushed quiet like stunner bangs. He sneers because he shouldn't be the one levitating the tray, but Wormtail waits on their lord during his visits - better that sniveling idiot than him. He sneers because this is the face he shows, and there are people down the dark side of the room. He sneers because it is not the water and darkness and hollow silence that frighten him.

He doesn't remember exactly where the prisoners are. The _Lumos_ from the tip of his wand almost blinds him for a moment until his eyes adjust and his heels click and echo, and he reaches the back wall. Ollivander leans against the stone, eyes closed. He could be dead, if not for the shallow rise and fall of his chest. His thin wrists are almost painful to look at. Draco's throat works for a moment, suddenly sandpaper dry, until he remembers how to swallow.

"Hello," a quiet voice says.

Draco instinctively steps back as he swivels to find something small sitting on the other side of the man. The first thing he sees: pale eyes framed by nearly white hair. The images of the Luna Lovegood from school and the girl who sits here now clash terribly, so he says nothing until he remembers himself.

"Looney Lovegood, was it?"

There isn't much behind this sneer. He levitates the tray to the ground, but the pale, round eyes remain steady on him. The fine hair on the back of his neck stand straight. Those eyes are not normal. He has to focus on keeping his feet in one spot.

"Thank you," comes the response. "I don't mind the draft," she says, his rudeness unnoticed or ignored, "but I don't think Mr. Ollivander does well with it. I think he would feel much better with a blanket, if that's alright."

Draco sees the man's skinny wrists from the corner of his eye but is unwilling or unable to look away from the girl's unnerving gaze, as if something horrible might happen if he glanced away. He hears the faint echo of a drip. Is it normal for someone to blink so little? It's cold in here, he thinks blandly, wondering why no one left a blanket before.

"It's quite different from school," she says unexpectedly, noticing his quick stock of the empty space. She doesn't seem to notice how ridiculous she sounds, but from what Draco strains to remember of her – snatches of unkind laughter following her through the hallways, a sweeping glance of Slughorn's party and her in dress robes with strange radish earrings – it isn't much of a change. He wonders if the place has gotten to her. If the war has gotten to her.

He can only nod mutely. His legs were straining to stumble back earlier, but they don't seem to be able to move now. She peers back to him and says in her funny, high voice, "so are you."

"Don't pretend you knew me," he snaps arrogantly, part of a second-natured haughtiness that comes as easily as breathing. She blinks slowly, unaffected.

"Oh, I didn't. I saw you around, of course, and heard about you enough, I'm sure, but not much else. You just don't seem like you belong here."

His nostrils flare as something inside his brain hits a panic button. Draco feels like this pale, dirty thing is doing something – something awful, and— "Of course I belong here. This is my home," he says, because he can't think of anything better. She seems to find this funny, because she smiles.

"Oh, I'm sure its your house," she says, and lets the soft words ring past the dim light from his wand.

"My home," he attempts to say firmly, but it comes out halted. Her lips are pale and grossly chapped, and her smile looks so tired. She is wearing the radish earrings he vaguely remembers from the party he wasn't invited to. She blinks as another droplet echoes from somewhere far behind him. He rips his eyes away and casts them along the ground, settling on the gruel in the bowls, and wrinkles his nose.

"What even is that?" he mutters.

"I'm not entirely sure," she says, but doesn't sound upset about it or anything. "It doesn't taste like much, so I don't mind. I tried to make Gurdyroot soup before they put me here, but I added too much sage. I can't complain about much after that," she says, as if by way of explanation. As if sitting in this dungeon isn't particularly terrible or odd, as if speaking to him as she absently chews on her shredded lip is a normal occurrence. As if she might wake up in her dormitory or her home. As if she doesn't know the possibility she might not see next month or next week or tomorrow. He wonders if she's gone mad.

"Aren't you afraid?" Draco thinks, and clamps his mouth shut because it takes a moment to realize he's said it aloud.

She smiles again, as if she finds him particularly amusing.

"Of what?"

Water drips and a pipe somewhere creaks and the area visible by his wandlight feels too small, only half-lit, everything too dark (even though it isn't the darkness that frightens him).

Draco wonders if _he's_ gone mad.

"I'm afraid of a lot of things," she says conversationally when he doesn't respond, and her eyes finally drift from him to watch the walls, the old man, the inky blackness that eats at the dungeon. "I'm afraid of little things, like centipedes, which is really quite silly because there isn't anything wrong with them. I woke up with a few on my bed during first year. I suppose I should feel lucky because they weren't native to Hogwarts at all, you know, and must've chosen my bed for a reason, but they make me shiver all the same. I'm afraid that something will happen to my daddy or his magazine. He cares for it an awful lot, but sometimes people get angry with him for writing the truth." She picks absently at a loose thread on her sleeve, her eyes looking to him again: he tries his best not to shrink away. "I'm afraid that my friends could get hurt. I'm afraid of people, sometimes."

His head jerks at this. Draco doesn't realize he was clenching his fists and tensing the muscles in his legs and arms until he remembers to relax, surprised at the momentary numbness. It feels like it takes an eternity to swallow past the lump in his throat, and the words jump from his tongue before he can catch them.

"I'm afraid of people sometimes, too."

His voice cracks a bit as he says it, and he feels humiliation burn across his chest until Luna Lovegood stands slowly, her hand resting on the wall for support, trapping his eyes with her own - a little too bright, away from sunlight a little too long, the radishes contrasting sharply with the grey of her face and her irises. His feet try to scramble back but Draco wills himself not to run, and the result is a clumsy scuffle as he steps backwards awkwardly to regain balance.

"I think most people are," she says as she steps towards him. Draco is suddenly terrified as she reaches small white hands out, and fear keeps him rooted to the stone like a slab of half-carved statue as she places her cold hands on the sides of his face.

"I heard once that a person with cold skin isn't so cold on the inside, though," she tells him. Her strange, high voice slices through Draco's black suit, his shined shoes and slicked hair. Her hair is almost white and her eyes are pale and her clothes hang from her sickly thin body, and this girl truly frightens him.

"You don't know anything!" His feet finally remember themselves and he staggers back, away from the small white hands that burn. "You don't know me! You don't know who I am and what I've done, I'm – I'm his servant and I'm going to do terrible things, great things," blurts from his mouth like vomit from the brain, from his gut, but she does not let go of his eyes, "you're stuck here with an old man and your friends are all going to die! I'm the one – I'm on the right side, _I am tomorrow."_

Something inside him asks if he's trying to tell her or himself. He stumbles back but cannot look away and he breathes heavily and shakily in the silence.

What he expects: terror, anger, crying. The hazy memory of Granger punching him square in the nose surfaces, and even that would be preferable to this quiet, pale thing standing unsteadily in front of him.

"That's a funny thing to say," is what he gets instead. "Tomorrow will be here any way you like it."

Her jumper is red and faded and dirty, radishes hang from her ears, her face is white and her hair is tangled and her eyes are round and curious and he wonders where the water dripping went. His face contorts and, mercifully, she closes her eyes for just a moment. Draco takes his chance and turns to run, but the image of the pale girl and her eyes standing so small against the backdrop of stone and silence is burned into the back of his lids.

He runs because he is a Malfoy, and he sneers into the darkness to prove himself until salt and wet crumbles his expression, and his cheeks are colder than they should be.

He runs now, but later, in the quiet and the cold, small white hands will reach out to find a thick blanket, and she will smile.

.


End file.
